Defra Digital

Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy.

Defra is transforming using digital technology to put customers at the heart of service design and create a great place for living – from the food we eat and the air we breathe, to the water we drink.

The world around us is constantly changing and we must evolve with it. Defra’s ambitious 2020 strategy sets out how we will create a great place for living. To achieve these ambitious targets we need to change how we work and deliver services. By putting data and technology at the heart of what we do, we will transform Defra digitally to develop clear simple online services, collect and use customer data once to simplify customer journeys, and embed the right digital skills to support Defra Group.

Claire Moriarty, Defra Permanent Secretary

As part of our design principles for the target operating model, we’ve asked people across Defra to ‘Embrace Digital and Data’. We’re not simply talking about channel shift or publishing our data sets (though we’re doing that, too!).  For us, embracing digital and data is a much wider concept – requiring a cultural shift away from traditional hierarchies and process towards more dynamic and collaborative ways of working based on empowerment and trust.

Betsy Bassis, Defra Chief Operating Officer

Defra ICT’s vision is to empower Defra to create a better place for living by delivering innovative agile solutions and ICT services. We will achieve this by delivering excellent digital services based on user needs and business requirements – being the exemplar across government for awesome technology, outstanding service and transformative capability.

John Seglias, Defra Chief Technology Officer

Related Stories

simpler, clearer digital defra
Iterating our digital principles

July 2018

This piece was co-authored with Myra Hunt, CDO at Defra. More than a year ago, mine and Myra Hunt’s predecessor Sally Meecham wrote about Defra’s digital principles, saying how they acted as a useful way of setting out our approach to simplifying services and cutting out complexity. A lot’s […]

Defra representative talking at one of our GovTech Meetups about their Catalyst bid
Lessons from winning the GovTech Catalyst grant fund

June 2018

This article was originally published on Defra Digital here. I was at Sprint 18 last week, where I got some good news: Defra has won a slice of the £20 million GovTech Catalyst (GTC) grant fund. There will be 3 more opportunities for public sector teams to apply to the GTC […]

Agile
Invest in people if you want to transform

February 2018

A few weeks ago, we were invited to speak at an internal event for managers in one part of Defra. The subject of our talk was “What are digital skills, and how do we develop them?” We think that good digital transformation happens when you […]

Up, up and very far away: remote sensing in flood response

April 2017

Currently 1.8 million people live in areas at risk of flooding across the UK. With an increasing population and dependence on flood plains for housing and industry, loss of natural flood defences and increased likelihood of extreme weather events; this figure is projected to rise. […]

Doing the hard digital work to make fishing simple

March 2017

Watch the recent webinar hosted by Claire and her team on the new service Our new digital rod licence application service has recently moved from private to public beta. It’s taken our multi-disciplinary team about 18 months to move through the agile development process from […]

Angling to meet user needs at Defra

March 2017

I watched a show-and-tell by Claire and delivery manager Mark Sherwood a week or so before, and was really impressed with what I saw. Here are the four things that really stood out for me. User research, user research, user research This team did an […]